Cries from the Heart by Johann Christoph Arnold

Author:Johann Christoph Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: depression anxiety prayer
Publisher: The Plough Publishing House
Published: 2011-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

Remorse

Go tell it on the mountain,

Over the hills and everywhere,

Go tell it on the mountain,

That Jesus Christ is born.

When I was a sinner,

I prayed both night and day.

I asked my Lord to help me,

And he showed me the way.

When I was a seeker,

I sought both night and day.

I asked my Lord to help me,

And he taught me to pray.

He made me a watchman

Upon the city wall;

And if I am a Christian,

I am the least of all.

Traditional Spiritual

One of my favorite songs , “Go tell it on the mountain,” contains a remarkably deep understanding of a person’s relationship to God. First, the speaker is conscious of his sin; he persists in prayer, pleading for divine intervention, and God answers. But then, like the rest of us, he strays and loses the way. He has to seek it again, diligently, and is led back to prayer, and through it to humility.

We have all done wrong, and many of life’s struggles are caused by wrongdoing of one sort or another. Countless people have come to me, burdened by sin and guilt and longing to be freed through confession. When a person comes in a spirit of true remorse, it is a humbling experience. Sometimes my own heart is struck by a confession because I realize I am guilty of the same thing.

Earlier, I mentioned unconfessed personal guilt as a common obstacle to prayer. Though I believe it is a universal truth, it is not universally acknowledged. William Shakespeare recognized it: after Claudius kills his brother, Hamlet’s father, to win the crown and the queen, he is shown wrestling with his inability to pray, despite his desire for repentance:

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,

A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will:

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;

And, like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin…

But, Oh, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?

That cannot be; since I am still possess’d

Of those effects for which I did the murder,

My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.

May one be pardon’d and retain the offense?…

Try what repentance can: what can it not?

Yet what can it when one can not repent?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!

In each person is the longing to be in touch with God. Often, however, it is hidden under so many layers of self that the outer life completely masks the inner. In such cases the spiritual life is not even evident; it lies dormant, its potential completely unrealized. Once a spiritual awakening is given, the struggle to remain faithful to that calling begins. This calls for a constant choosing between right and wrong, good and evil, and an ongoing cleansing of ourselves when we make the wrong choice.

I first got to know Brian through our church’s prison ministry in the late 1980s. Earlier, he had served in the Marines and experienced violence and abuse.

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